Two man-mountains tear the house down, a new number one contender is crowned and Walter
kicks the face off Kushida!! Yes, it’s NXT again!
I’m El Fakidor Laurie Blake and if you haven’t already why don’t you subscribe to WrestleTalk
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And click the ‘i’ above my head to give your rating of this week’s NXT - where you
can choose from: An EST NXT, Undisputed-ly Good, The Fine-est, 2 Out of 5 Live, and the
bottom rating, the worst of the worst, Cameron Grimes’ Hat - as I review the September
25th episode of NXT with limited commercial interruption.
The show opened with a recap of last week’s episode showing how good the matches were
while Triple H attempts to brainwash is all by repeating ‘we are NXT’ over and over
again. But you know what, I would like a glass of that Kool-Aid thank you very much.
The Undisputed Era then appear on a special balcony to hype up the crowd for the first
contest.
Thankfully this match needed no hyping as the two the pair have had before on NXT were
standout bouts.
And this joined those great clashes of these titans as another stellar epic.
The premise is simple two big dudes have a cruiser weight match, it’s genius. And they
did a top rope Canadian Destroyer so give this NXT the top rating already will you.
Lee finally gained some momentum too looking like an unstoppable powerhouse who can bounce
back from anything and do a sort-of deadlift Undertaker sit up spot too.
Which Lee turns into the Limit Breaker and picks up the win. 1 a piece in the series
which means we have to have a decider!
We then get a recap of Matt Riddle and Killian Dain’s non starter street fight and Big
Willy Reegs stating you’re very naughty, have a main event spot and a title opportunity.
We then see Matt Riddle warming up in an alley which also seems to be the smoking area for
a prom?
A quick Street Profits promo says the lads will take on the Undisputed Era next week.
An emotional Dakota Kai returned, with Calvin Kick ring gear, to take on Taynara Formerly
Conti. More like Cont I keep my surname.
This was a quick little match with Taynara getting a few vicious moves in, but mostly
Kai Turing the surgically repaired knee to good use and kicking The Judokas face off.
Kai finishes things off with a modified Go To Sleep called the ago To Kick... Go To Kick
more like Get Tae Fu-.
The angel Cathy Kelley appears descends from heaven with a message that’s Kushida and
two mystery partners oooh will face Imperium on the second half of NXT on NXT WWE Network.
Haha. She flubbed her lines.
And then it’s time for Riddle vs Dain.
Things start off very wrestling before it all breaks down outside of the ring. And then
the match becomes a lot of fun, we get Dain screaming about Riddle being a UFC fighter,
putting him through a board, Riddle putting Dain through a table, kendo sticks, vaderbombs
and a flash knee chair shot.
Riddle finally finishes things off with a hyper extending Fujiwara armbar forcing Dain
to tap and earning himself a shot at Adam Cole on next week’s NXT.
Cole then runs down to gloat over a hurting Riddle and earns himself a Fujiwara armbar
for his troubles
The rest of the Era run down and make the save leading us into the second half of the
show.
Rhea Ripley opened hour two in the person from NXT UK who works here now spot that Pete
Dunne had last week.
She took on Kayden Carter, the former Lacey Lane, who got a really good showing busting
out some incredible ranas but ultimately running down to the Riptide and being taken away to
the darkside.
Another momentum building win for Ripley.
Speaking of momentum, it was sucked right out of the room as Danny Burch and Oney Lorcan
took on the team of Chase Parker and Matt Martel, newly dubbed Ever-Rise. Which sounds
like a brand name flour… or dick pills.
This match was one long, hard, standing to attention… sorry, stuck on the dick pills
thing… it was a drag, one long hot tag spot with Ever-Rise beating down Oney.
Burch eventually gets the hot tag and nuts his way through the team before summoning
Oney Lorcan back to life like one of Rita Repulsa’s monsters.
Magic wand, make my monster grow!
This one bit was fun but the length of the match killed the crowd.
We caught a quick glimpse of Deonna Purazzo and Chelsea Green in the crowd. Looking forward
to Mrs Chicken Wing and The Hot Mess to make a proper debut.
Next Raul Mendoza put a valiant effort in against Cameron Grimes, gaining a bit of babyface
backing from the crowd before being crushed by the leaping double stomp.
It was a fine match but everyone was flat from the tag still.
We also got a weird lingering shot of Cameron Grimes’ hat on the ring post at the beginning.
To cap things off Kushida took on Imperium with the help of top secret mystery partners…
Breezango.
I’m sorry but this was built as an exciting surprise and after last week with the crazy
debuts I imagined it could be someone big. But Breezango, in the full Fashion Police
get-up, is this NXT or a hen party. They need a change of gimmick, but I understand the
choice behind them to counter Imperium’s sacred ring thing.
Anyway the match basically replayed the tag from earlier, but this time with Breeze suffering
the beat down, which didn’t do much to bring the crowd back round.
The inevitable hot tag follows and Fandango clears house before letting Kushi in to do
some flip-dee-doos and steal the whole thing with a roll up.
Considering what everyone in this match is capable of this was quite bland. But it did
lead to a finale in which Walter appears from backstage and kicks Kushi’s face off. Leaving
Imperium posing tall to close out the show.
I’m all in for Kushida vs Walter but this match didn’t do it for me.
Again this week’s show was a game of two halves - falling foul of the channel split
in the worst way by having the USA hour as NXT of the finest vintage, but the second
hour dragged with two pretty boring matches, and little of actual consequence happening.
So with that said I think this week’s NXT was Fineeeee-est.
Over to Oli with the news now.
NXT has been very fun these last two weeks since moving to the USA Network - but it’s
next Wednesday’s episode that really matters. Because the prologue is going to be over,
and the Wednesday Night Wars truly begin, with NXT going a full two hours on USA up
against the first ever episode AEW Dynamite live on TNT!
I just wish we could watch it over here in the UK just as easily.
All Elite Wrestling have continued to load up their real SEASON PREMIERE by adding the
match that was supposed to happen back at May’s Double or Nothing show - Hangman Page
vs PAC. This joins the debut episode’s other big matches of Nyla Rose vs Riho to crown
the first ever AEW Women’s Champion], and The Elite of Kenny Omega and the Young Bucks
taking on Chris Jericho and TWO MULTI-TIME WWE CHAMPIONS VACANT.
CM Punk to AEW confirmed. Twice. Unfortunately, though, after a year to get
ready, AEW’s launch on TV has suffered controversy this week.
Firstly from one half of that inaugural AEW Women’s Championship match, Nyla Rose.
As a transgender wrestler, Nyla is unfortunately subject to trolling comments online. It’s
difficult to always turn the other cheek to such hateful comments, but in an incident
this week, she reacted by essentially making fun of peadophilia - replying to a troll in
a since-deleted tweet: “Awwwww you want attention hun?? What’s
wrong baby? mommy not hug you enough??? Did daddy mouth touch you in the no no place?”
Sinking to the troll’s level isn’t the best look for AEW, and Nyla quickly tweeted
an apology for not considering “the people that it could affect and hurt” with the
caption “My constant goal is to be better than I was the day before. Today is no exception.”
But most concerning ahead of their big TV launch is how AEW Dynamite will air in their
second biggest market… A large part of Tony KHAAAAN’s masterplan
for AEW is to focus on the UK fanbase, which is traditionally WWE’s second biggest market
after the US. This took the form in a pay-per-view deal with ITV, where AEW events have been
available on their box office service this year. As a result, it was assumed Dynamite
would eventually end up on one of ITV’s channels as a free-to-air show in the UK.
And that is what’s happened… but not in the way anyone would want it to.
Just a week away from the show’s debut, which is cutting it very fine and implies
negotiations have gone up to almost the last minute, ITV announced:
“ITV is to show brand new weekly wrestling show AEW: Dynamite on free to air television
from next month. The run will start with the full two hour show on @ITV4 on Sun 6 Oct at
0820 followed by a one hour highlights programme on ITV on Mon 7 Oct at 11.45pm (1/2)”
Fans reacted furiously to the news, calling it “disgusting” that that the UK will
have to wait four days after it airs in the US, pointing out AEW will now have a worse
timeslot than MLW and IMPACT, and that most people will just watch it illegally.
It’s even more problematic considering Cody Rhodes said this week that Dynamite will be
TV-14 rated, implying the first and only full-length UK broadcast will be heavily censored as it
goes out at 8.20am on a Sunday morning. And with AEW pay-per-views happening on Saturdays,
that also means the UK won’t get the go-home show until after the pay-per-view has aired.
A follow-up tweet from ITV hinted the schedule could be revised following November 9th’s
Full Gear show, again implying this deal was a rush-job to get Dynamite a deal before it
debuted in the States - which led Tony Khan to make another announcement:
“We’ll work together to ensure there will always be a free to air broadcast of the most
recent episode of AEW: Dynamite before Saturday PPVs including Full Gear. We’ll also be
announcing a live viewing solution soon for the UK + many other countries with great AEW
fans. Thank you!” That ‘live viewing solution’ for the UK
comes in the form of their international pay-per-view provider FITE.TV, who have announced a new
AEW Plus global subscription which lets fans in the UK, Australia, Japan, Ireland, Italy,
Spain, the Middle East, Chile and Brazil watch Dynamite live as it airs in the US and replay
access after. Dave Meltzer has since revealed on Wrestling
Observer Radio that the ITV deal had changed considerably in just the last few days:
“I was getting stuff from people in the advertising community in the UK saying the
deal’s done, and it was gonna be airing three times a week. And it was going to be
live on Wednesday, Friday night in a good time slot and Sunday morning timeslot.”
Apparently the reason the live Wednesday night broadcast was scrapped was because “TNT
and ITV4 could not come to an agreement on how to handle the commercials” - as advertising
laws are stricter in the UK, with the regulatory body OFCOM only allowing 12 minutes of commercials
an hour as opposed to TNT’s planned 16. Funnily enough, that used to be my job - taking
live US sports broadcasts and making sure they adhered to OFCOM regulations. Which is
an easy fix of running extra channel promos and filler content that doesn’t count towards
the 12 minute limit. So I personally don’t buy into that reason. And it also doesn’t
explain why the planned Friday night AEW slot was dropped, too.
While international TV deals of this magnitude are very difficult to pull off, and AEW have
found an online fix with the FITE.TV subscription, this can be considered a significant setback
to the new promotion’s global strategy - a big part of which was introducing new casual
wrestling fans in the UK to their product, whereas now that reach will be severely limited,
and mostly targeted at their existing fans online. Hopefully this is just a short-term
fix that will have better scheduling after the Full Gear pay-per-view.
Has there been a backstage clash between Paul Heyman and SmackDown over Bray Wyatt’s The
Fiend?! Find out by clicking the video on the right! And RIP SmackDown Live! Watch our
review of the last ever USA Network episode by clicking the video below that. I’ve been
Oli Davis, and that was wrestling.